People magazine's article this week on Britney Spears and her "new guy," model Isaac Cohen, is five paragraphs long. It was reported and written by seven people. Seven reporters collaborated on People's Britney Spears article. To be fair, they were long paragraphs. But with layoffs expected this week at Time Inc., which publishes People, such reporter-heavy treatment is headed the way of Kevin Federline, Ms. Spears's soon-to-be-ex-husband.

Time Inc., the publishing division of Time Warner, is planning to cut more than 150 people, about half of them in editorial jobs across the company's best-known titles, like People, Sports Illustrated, Time and Fortune. The cuts follow about 600 last year, many of them from the company's business side, and a decision to trim its roster by selling 18 of its roughly 150 titles. Time Inc.'s top executive, Ann S. Moore, has not yet publicly outlined or discussed the cuts, and she declined to be interviewed for this article. But other executives said that, while Time Inc. remains profitable, with margins of about 18 percent, it is witnessing a downturn in print advertising revenue and increasingly fierce competition from the Internet.

To prepare for the future, they said, the company is cutting costs now and continuing to shift resources to its branded Web sites. That in turn is prompting big changes to the standard newsweekly formula of many correspondents contributing to heavily processed articles at magazines like Time and People. Time Inc. is taking other steps to save money. Within a year or two, most of the company's corporate offices and magazines at the Time-Life Building in Midtown Manhattan will have moved to lower floors so that the more valuable upper floors can be leased out. Time magazine is shutting some of its bureau buildings overseas, including in Paris, although it expects to maintain "laptop" correspondents, who can work from home. "They're amputating in order to save the patient," said an executive at a competing publishing company.

Time Inc.'s challenges mirror those of the publishing business broadly: its strong brands generate plenty of cash and profit, but have not been growing, a profile that is highly unpopular on Wall Street these days. But, while its biggest competitors, Condé Nast Publications and the Hearst Corporation, are privately held, Time Inc. is part of a publicly traded conglomerate with big holdings in television, film, cable and the Internet and is on a mission to prove itself to restless investors.

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Advertising has been down for many magazines, in part because of troubles in the auto industry and a slump in financial services. Ad pages at several Time Inc. publications dropped last year, compared with 2005: Fortune, down 6.4 percent; Money, down 9.6 percent; People, down 2.9 percent.